Some philosophers say they do not know what
the thesis of determinism is. Others say, or imply, that they do know
what it is. Of these, some — the pessimists perhaps — hold that if the
thesis is true, then the concepts
of moral obligation and responsibility really have no application, and
the practices of punishing and blaming, of expressing moral
condemnation and approval,
are really unjustified. Others — the optimists perhaps — hold that these
concepts and practices in no way lose their raison d’être
if the thesis of determinism is true. Some hold even that the
justification of these concepts and practices requires the truth of the
thesis. There is
another opinion which is less frequently voiced: the opinion, it might
be
said, of the genuine moral sceptic. This is that the notions of moral
guilt,
of blame, of moral responsibility are inherently confused and that we
can
see this to be so if we consider the consequences either of the truth
of
determinism or of its falsity. The holders of this opinion agree with
the
pessimists that these notions lack application if determinism is true,
and
add simply that they also lack it if determinism is false. If I am
asked
which of these parties I belong to, I must say it is the first of all,
the
party of those who do not know what the thesis of determinism is. But
this
does not stop me from having some sympathy with the others, and a wish
to
reconcile them. Should not ignorance, rationally, inhibit such
sympathies?
Well, of course, though darkling, one has some inkling — some notion
of what sort of thing is being talked about. This lecture is intended
as
a move towards reconciliation; so is likely to seem wrongheaded to
everyone.

But can there be any possibility of
reconciliation between such
clearly opposed positions as those of pessimists and optimists about
determinism? Well, there might be a formal withdrawal on one side in
return for a substantial concession on the other. Thus, suppose the
optimist’s position were
put like this: 1 the facts as we know them do not show determinism to
be false; (2) the facts as we know them supply an adequate basis for
the concepts and practices which the pessimist feels to be imperilled
by the possibility of determinism’s truth. Now it might be that the
optimist is right
in this, but is apt to give an inadequate account of the facts as we
know
them, and of how they constitute an adequate basis for the problematic
concepts and practices; that the reasons he gives for the adequacy of
the basis are
themselves inadequate and leave out something vital. It might be that
the
pessimist is rightly anxious to get this vital thing back and, in the
grip
of his anxiety, feels he has to go beyond the facts as we know them;
feels
that the vital thing can be secure only if, beyond the facts as we know
them,
there is the further fact that determinism is false. Might he not be
brought
to make a formal withdrawal in return for a vital concession?

II

Let me enlarge very briefly on this, by way
of preliminary only. Some optimists about determinism point to the
efficacy of the practices of
punishment, and of moral condemnation and approval, in regulating
behaviour in socially desirable ways. (1) In the fact of their
efficacy, they suggest, is an adequate basis for these practices; and
this fact certainly does not
show determinism to be false. To this the pessimists reply, all in a
rush,
that just punishment and moral condemnation imply moral guilt and guilt
implies
moral responsibility and moral responsibility implies freedom and
freedom
implies the falsity of determinism. And to this the optimists are wont
to
reply in turn that it is true that these practices require freedom in a
sense,
and the existence of freedom in this sense is one of the facts as we
know
them. But what ‘freedom’ means here is nothing but the absence
of certain conditions the presence of which would make moral
condemnation
or punishment inappropriate. They have in mind conditions like
compulsion
by another, or innate incapacity, or insanity, or other less extreme
forms
of psychological disorder, or the existence of circumstances in which
the
making of any other choice would be morally inadmissible or would be
too
much to expect of any man. To this list they are constrained to add
other
factors which, without exactly being limitations of freedom, may also
make
moral condemnation or punishment inappropriate or mitigate their force:
as
some forms of ignorance, mistake, or accident. And the general reason
why
moral condemnation or punishment are inappropriate when these factors
or
conditions are present is held to be that the practices in question
will
be generally efficacious means of regulating behaviour in desirable
ways
only in cases where these factors are not present.

Now the pessimist
admits
that the facts as we know them include the existence of freedom, the
occurrence
of cases of free action, in the negative sense which the optimist
concedes;
and admits, or rather insists, that the existence of freedom in this
sense
is compatible with the truth of determinism. Then what does the
pessimist
find missing? When he tries to answer this question, his language is
apt
to alternate between the very familiar and the very unfamiliar.2 Thus
he
may say, familiarly enough, that the man who is the subject of
justified
punishment, blame or moral condemnation must really deserve it; and
then
add, perhaps, that, in the case at least where he is blamed for a
positive
act rather than an omission, the condition of his really deserving
blame
is something that goes beyond the negative freedoms that the optimist
concedes.
It is, say, a genuinely free identification of the will with the act.
And
this is the condition that is incompatible with the truth of
determinism.

The conventional, but conciliatory, optimist
need not give up yet.
He may say: Well, people often decide to do things, really intend to do
what they do, know just what they’re doing in doing it; the reasons
they
think they have for doing what they do, often really are their reasons
and
not their rationalizations. These facts, too, are included in the facts
as we know them. If this is what you mean by freedom — by the
identification of the will with the act — then freedom may again be
conceded. But again the concession is compatible with the truth of the
determinist thesis. For
it would not follow from that thesis that nobody decides to do
anything; that
nobody ever does anything intentionally; that it is false that people
sometimes
know perfectly well what they are doing. I tried to define freedom
negatively.
You want to give it a more positive look. But it comes to the same
thing.
Nobody denies freedom in this sense, or these senses, and nobody claims
that
the existence of freedom in these senses shows determinism to be
false.

But it is here that the lacuna in the
optimistic story can be made
to show. For the pessimist may be supposed to ask: But why does freedom
in this sense justify blame, etc.? You turn towards me first the
negative, and
then the positive, faces of a freedom which nobody challenges. But the
only
reason you have given for the practices of moral condemnation and
punishment
in cases where this freedom is present is the efficacy of these
practices
in regulating behaviour in socially desirable ways. But this is not a
sufficient
basis, it is not even the right sort of basis, for these practices as
we
understand them.

Now my optimist, being the sort of man he is,
is not likely to invoke an intuition of fittingness at this point. So
he really has no more to say.
And my pessimist, being the sort of man he is, has only one more thing
to
say; and that is that the admissibility of these practices, as we
understand them, demands another kind of freedom, the kind that in turn
demands the falsity
of the thesis of determinism. But might we not induce the pessimist to
give
up saying this by giving the optimist something more to say?

III

I have mentioned punishing and moral
condemnation and approval;
and it is in connection with these practices or attitudes that the
issue
between optimists and pessimists — or, if one is a pessimist, the issue
between determinists and libertarians — is felt to be particularly
important.
But it is not of these practices and attitudes that I propose, at
first,
to speak. These practices or attitudes permit, where they do not imply,
a
certain detachment from the actions or agents which are their objects.
I
want to speak, at least at first, of something else: of the
non-detached
attitudes and reactions of people directly involved in transactions
with
each other; of the attitudes and reactions of offended parties and
beneficiaries;
of such things as gratitude, resentment, forgiveness, love, and hurt
feelings.
Perhaps something like the issue between optimists and pessimists
arises
in this neighbouring field too; and since this field is less crowded
with
disputants, the issue might here be easier to settle; and if it is
settled
here, then it might become easier to settle it in the disputant-crowded
field.

What I have to say consists largely of
commonplaces. So my language, like that of commonplaces generally, will
be quite unscientific and imprecise. The central commonplace that I
want to insist on is the very great importance that we attach to the
attitudes and intentions towards us of other human beings,
and the great extent to which our personal feelings and reactions
depend
upon, or involve, our beliefs about these attitudes and intentions. I
can
give no simple description of the field of phenomena at the centre of
which
stands this commonplace truth; for the field is too complex. Much
imaginative
literature is devoted to exploring its complexities; and we have a
large
vocabulary for the purpose. There are simplifying styles of handling it
in
a general way. Thus we may, like La Rochefoucauld, put self-love or
self-esteem
or vanity at the centre of the picture and point out how it may be
caressed
by the esteem, or wounded by the indifference or contempt, of others.
We
might speak, in another jargon, of the need for love, and the loss of
security
which results from its withdrawal; or, in another, of human
self-respect
and its connection with the recognition of the individual’s dignity.
These simplifications are of use to me only if they help to emphasize
how
much we actually mind, how much it matters to us, whether the actions
of
other people — and particularly of some other people — reflect attitudes
towards us of goodwill, affection, or esteem on the one hand or
contempt, indifference, or malevolence on the other. If someone treads
on my hand accidentally,
while trying to help me, the pain may be no less acute than if he
treads
on it in contemptuous disregard of my existence or with a malevolent
wish
to injure me. But I shall generally feel in the second case a kind and
degree
of resentment that I shall not feel in the first. If someone’s actions
help me to some benefit I desire, then I am benefited in any case; but
if
he intended them so to benefit me because of his general goodwill
towards
me, I shall reasonably feel a gratitude which I should not feel at all
if
the benefit was an incidental consequence, unintended or even regretted
by
him, of some plan of action with a different aim.

These examples are of actions which confer
benefits or inflict injuries over and above any conferred or inflicted
by the mere manifestation of attitude
and intention themselves. We should consjder also in how much of our
behaviour
the benefit or injury resides mainly or entirely in the manifestation
of
attitude itself. So it is with good manners, and much of what we call
kindness,
on the one hand; with deliberate rudeness, studied indifference, or
insult
on the other. Besides resentment and gratitude, I mentioned just now
forgiveness.
This is a rather unfashionable subject in moral philosophy at present;
but
to be forgiven is something we sometimes ask, and forgiving is
something
we sometimes say we do. To ask to be forgiven is in part to acknowledge
that
the attitude displayed in our actions was such as might properly be
resented
and in part to repudiate that attitude for the future (or at least for
the
immediate future); and to forgive is to accept the repudiation and to
forswear
the resentment.

We should think of the many different kinds of
relationship which
we can have with other people — as sharers of a common interest; as
members of the same family; as colleagues; as friends; as lovers; as
chance parties to an enormous range of transactions and encounters.
Then we should think, in each of these connections in turn, and in
others, of the kind of importance we attach to the attitudes and
intentions towards us of those who stand in
these relationships to us, and of the kinds of reactive attitudes and
feelings
to which we ourselves are prone. In general, we demand some degree of
goodwill
or regard on the part of those who stand in these relationships to us,
though
the forms we require it to take vary widely in different connections.
The
range and intensity of our reactive attitudes towards goodwill, its
absence
or its opposite vary no less widely. I have mentioned, specifically,
resentment
and gratitude; and they are a usefully opposed pair. But, of course,
there
is a whole continuum of reactive attitude and feeling stretching on
both
sides of these and — the most comfortable area — in between them.

The object of these commonplaces is to try to
keep before our minds something it is easy to forget when we are
engaged in philosophy, especially in our cool, contemporary style, viz.
what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal
relationships, ranging from the most intimate to
the most casual.

IV

It is one thing to ask about the general
causes of these reactive attitudes I have alluded to; it is another to
ask about the variations to
which they are subject, the particular conditions in which they do or
do
not seem natural or reasonable or appropriate; and it is a third thing
to
ask what it would be like, what it is like, not to suffer them. I am
not
much concerned with the first question; but I am with the second; and
perhaps
even more with the third.

Let us consider, then, occasions for
resentment: situations in which one person is offended or injured by
the action of another and in which — in the absence of special
considerations — the offended person might naturally or normally be
expected to feel resentment. Then let us consider what sorts of special
considerations might be expected to modify or mollify this feeling or
remove it altogether. It needs no saying now how multifarious these
considerations
are. But, for my purpose, I think they can be roughly divided into two
kinds.
To the first group belong all those which might give occasion for the
employment
of such expressions as ‘He didn’t mean to’, ‘He hadn’t realized’, ‘He
didn’t know’; and also all those which
might give occasion for the use of the phrase ‘He couldn’t help
it’, when this is supported by such phrases as ‘He was pushed’,
‘He had to do it’, ‘It was the only way’, ‘They
left him no alternative’, etc. Obviously these various pleas, and the
kinds of situations in which they would be appropriate, differ from
each
other in striking and important ways. But for my present purpose they
have
something still more important in common. None of them invites us to
suspend
towards the agent, either at the time of his action or in general, our
ordinary
reactive attitudes. They do not invite us to view the agent as one in
respect
of whom these attitudes are in any way inappropriate. They invite us to
view
the injury as one in respect of which a particular one of these
attitudes
is inappropriate. They do not invite us to see the agent as other than
a
fully responsible agent. They invite us to see the injury as one for
which
he was not fully, or at all, responsible. They do not suggest that the
agent
is in any way an inappropriate object of that kind of demand for
goodwill
or regard which is reflected in our ordinary reactive attitudes. They
suggest
instead that the fact of in jury was not in this case incompatible with
that
demand’s being fulfilled, that the fact of injury was quite consistent
with the agent’s attitude and intentions being just what we demand
they should be.3 The agent was just ignorant of the injury he was
causing,
or had lost his balance through being pushed or had reluctantly to
cause
the injury for reasons which acceptably override his reluctance. The
offering
of such pleas by the agent and their acceptance by the sufferer is
something
in no way opposed to, or outside the context of, ordinary
inter-personal
relationships and the manifestation of ordinary reactive attitudes.
Since
things go wrong and situations are complicated, it is an essential and
integral
element in the transactions which are the life of these
relationships.

The second group of considerations is very
different. I shall take
them in two subgroups of which the first is far less important than the
second. In connection with the first subgroup we may think of such
statements as ‘He
wasn’t himself’, ‘He has been under very great strain recently’,
‘He was acting under post-hypnotic suggestion’; in connection
with the second, we may think of ‘He’s only a child’, ‘He’s
a hopeless schizophrenic’, ‘His mind has been systematically
perverted’, ‘That’s purely compulsive behaviour on his
part’. Such pleas as these do, as pleas of my first general group do
not, invite us to suspend our ordinary reactive attitudes towards the
agent,
either at the time of his action or all the time. They do not invite us
to
see the agent’s action in a way consistent with the full retention of
ordinary inter-personal attitudes and merely inconsistent with one
particular attitude. They invite us to view the agent himself in a
different light from
the light in which we should normally view one who has acted as he has
acted.
I shall not linger over the first subgroup of cases. Though they
perhaps
raise, in the short term, questions akin to those raised, in the long
term,
by the second subgroup, we may dismiss them without considering those
questions
by taking that admirably suggestive phrase, ‘He wasn’t himself’,
with the seriousness that — for all its being logically comic — it
deserves. We shall not feel resentment against the man he is for the
action done by the man he is not; or at least we shall feel less. We
normally have
to deal with him under normal stresses; so we shall not feel towards
him,
when he acts as he does under abnormal stresses, as we should have felt
towards
him had he acted as he did under normal stresses.

The second and more important subgroup of
cases allows that the
circumstances were normal, but presents the agent as psychologically
abhormal — or
as morally undeveloped. The agent was himself; but he is warped or
deranged,
neurotic or just a child. When we see someone in such a light as this,
all
our reactive attitudes tend to be profoundly modified. I must deal here
in
crude dichotomies and ignore the ever-interesting and ever-illuminating
varieties
of case. What I want to contrast is the attitude (or range of
attitudes)
of involvement or participation in a human relationship, on the one
hand,
and what might be called the objective attitude (or range of attitudes)
to
another human being, on the other. Even in the same situation, I must
add,
they are not altogether exclusive of each other; but they are,
profoundly,
opposed to each other. To adopt the objective attitude to another human
being
is to see him, perhaps, as an object of social policy; as a sub ject
for
what, in a wide range of sense, might be called treatment; as something
certainly to be taken account, perhaps precautionary account, of; to be
managed or handled
or cured or trained; perhaps simply to be avoided, though this
gerundive
is not peculiar to cases of objectivity of attitude. The objective
attitude
may be emotionally toned in many ways, but not in all ways: it may
include
repulsion or fear, it may include pity or even love, though not all
kinds
of love. But it cannot include the range of reactive feelings and
attitudes
which belong to involvement or participation with others in
inter-personal
human relationships; it cannot include resentment, gratitude,
forgiveness,
anger, or the sort of love which two adults can sometimes be said to
feel
reciprocally, for each other. If your attitude towards someone is
wholly
objective, then though you may light him, you cannot quarrel with him,
and
though you may talk to him, even negotiate with him, you cannot reason
with
him. You can at most pretend to quarrel, or to reason, with him.

Seeing someone, then, as warped or deranged or
compulsive in behaviour or peculiarly unfortunate in his formative
circumstances — seeing someone so tends, at least to some extent, to set
him apart from normal participant reactive attitudes on the part of one
who so sees him, tends to promote, at
least in the civilized, objective attitudes. But there is something
curious
to add to this. The objective attitude is not only something we
naturally
tend to fall into in cases like these, where participant attitudes are
partially
or wholly inhibited by abnormalities or by immaturity, It is also
something
which is available as a resource in other cases too. We look with an
objective
eye on the compulsive behaviour of the neurotic or the tiresome
behaviour
of a very young child, thinking in terms of treatment or training. But
we
can sometimes look with something like the same eye on the behaviour of
the
normal and the mature. We have this resource and can sometimes use it;
as
a refuge, say, from the strains of involvement; or as an aid to policy;
or
simply out of intellectual curiosity. Being human, we cannot, in the
normal
case, do this for long, or altogether. If the strains of involvement,
say,
continue to be too great, then we have to do something else - like
severing
a relationship. But what is above all interesting is the tension there
is,
in us, between the participant attitude and the objective attitude. One
is
tempted to say: between our humanity and our intelLigence. But to say
this
would be to distort both notions.

What I have called the participant reactive
attitudes are essentially natural human reactions to the good or ill
will or indifference of others towards us, as displayed in their
attitudes and actions. The question we have
to ask is: What effect would, or should, the acceptance of the truth of
a
general thesis of determinism have upon these reactive attitudes? More
specifically,
would, or should, the acceptance of the truth of the thesis lead to the
decay
or the repudiation of all such attitudes? Would, or should, it mean the
end
of gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness; of all reciprocated adult
loves;
of all the essentially personal antagonisms?

But how can I answer, or even pose, this
question without knowing
exactly what the thesis of determinism is? Well, there is one thing we
do
know; that if there is a coherent thesis of determinism, then there
must
be a sense of ‘determined’ such that, if that thesis is true,
then all behaviour whatever is determined in that sense. Remembering
this,
we can consider at least what possibilities lie formally open; and then
perhaps
we shall see that the question can be answered without knowing exactly
what
the thesis of determinism is. We can considçr what possibilities
lie open because we have already before us an account of the ways in
which particular
reactive attitudes, or reactive attitudes in general, may be, and,
sometimes,
we judge, should be, inhibited. Thus I considered earlier a group of
considerations
which tend to inhibit, and, we judge, should inhibit, resentment, in
particular
cases of an agent causing an injury, without inhibiting reactive
attitudes
in general towards that agent. Obviously this group of considerations
cannot
strictly bear upon our question; for that question concerns reactive
attitudes
in general. But resentment has a particular interest; so it is worth
adding
that it has never been daimed as a consequence of the truth of
determinism
that one or another of these considerations was operative in every case
of
an injury being caused by an agent; that it would follow from the truth
of
determinism that anyone who caused an injury either was quite simply
ignorant
of causing it or had acceptably overriding reasons for acquiescing
reluctantly
in causing it or. . ., etc. The prevalence of this happy state of
affairs
would not be a consequence of the reign of universal determinism, but
of
the reign of universal goodwill. We cannot, then, find here the
possibility
of an affirmative answer to our question, even for the particular case
of
resentment.

Next, I remarked that the participant
attitude, and the personal
reactive attitudes in general, tend to give place, and it is judged by
the
civilized should give place, to objective attitudes, just in so far as
the
agent is seen as excluded from ordinary adult human relationships by
deep-rooted. psychological abnormality — or simply by being a child. But
it cannot
be a consequence of any thesis which is not itself self-contradictory
that abnormality is the universal condition.

Now this dismissal might seem altogether too
facile; and so, in
a sense, it is. But whatever is too quickly dismissed in this dismissal
is
allowed for in the only possible form of affirmative answer that
remains.
We can sometimes, and in part, I have remarked, look on the normal
(those
we rate as ‘normal’) in the objective way in which we have learned
to look on certain classified cases of abnormality. And our question
reduces
to this: could, or should, the acceptance of the determinist thesis
lead
us always to look on everyone exclusively in this way? For this is the
only
condition worth considering under which the acceptancc of determinism
could
lead to the decay or repudiation of participant reactive
attitudes.

It does not seem to be self-contradictory to
suppose that this might happen. So I suppose we must say that it is not
absolutely inconceivable that
it should happen. But I am strongly inclined to think that it is, for
us
as we are, practically inconceivable. The human commitment to
participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships is, I think, too
thoroughgoing and
deeply rooted for us to take seriously the thought that a general
theoretical conviction might so change our world that, in it, there
were no longer any
such things as inter-personal relationships as we normally understand
them;
and being involved in inter-personal relationships as we normally
understand
them precisely is being exposed to the range of reactive attitudes and
feelings
that is in question.

This, then, is a part of the reply to our
question. A sustained
objectivity of inter-personal attitude, and the human isolation which
that
would entail, does not seem to be something of which human beings would
be
capable, even if some general truth were a theoretical ground for it.
But
this is not all. There is a further point, implicit in the foregoing,
which
must be made explicit. Exceptionally, I have said, we can have direct
dealings with human beings without any degree of personal involvement,
treating them
simply as creatures to be handled in our own interest, or our side’s,
or society’s — or even theirs. In the extreme case of the mentally
deranged, it is easy to see the connection between the possibility of a
wholly
objective attitude and the impossibility of what we understand by
ordinary
interpersonal relationships. Given this latter impossibility, no other
civilized
attitude is available than that of viewing the deranged person simply
as
something to be understood and controlled in the most desirable
fashion.
To view him as outside the reach of personal relationships is already,
for
the civilized, to view him in this way. For reasons of policy or
self-protection we may have occasion, perhaps temporary, to adopt a
fundamentally similar attitude to a ‘normal’ human being; to
concentrate, that is,
on understanding ‘how he works’, with a view to determining our
policy accordingly, or to finding in that very understanding a relief
from
the strains of involvement. Now it is certainly true that in the case
of
the abnormal, though not in the case of the normal, our adoption of the
objective
attitude is a consequence of our viewing the agent as incapacitated in
some
or all respects for ordinary interpersonal relationships. He is thus
incapacitated,
perhaps, by the fact that his picture of reality is pure fantasy, that
he
does not, in a sense, live in the real world at all; or by the fact
that
his behaviour is, in part, an unrealistic acting out of unconscious
purposes;
or by the fact that he is an idiot, or a moral idiot. But there is
something
else which, because this is true, is equally certainly not true. And
that
is that there is a sense of ‘determined’ such that (1) if determinism
is true, all behaviour is determined in this sense, and (2) determinism
might
be true, i.e. it is not inconsistent with the facts as we know them to
suppose that all behaviour might be determined in this sense, and (3)
our adoption of the objective attitude towards the abnormal is the
result of a prior embracing
of the belief that the behaviour, or the relevant stretch of behaviour,
of
the human being in question is determined in this sense. Neither in the
case
of the normal, then, nor in the case of the abnormal is it true that,
when
we adopt an objective attitude, we do so because we hold such a belief.
So
my answer has two parts. The first is that we cannot, as we are,
seriously
envisage ourselves adopting a thoroughgoing objectivity of attitude to
others
as a result of theoretical conviction of the truth of determinism; and
the
second is that when we do in fact adopt such an attitude in a
particular
case, our doing so is not the consequence of a theoretical conviction
which
might be expressed as ‘Determinism in this case’, but is a consequence
of our abandoning, for different reasons in different cases, the
ordinary
inter-personal attitudes.

It might be said that all this leaves the real
question unanswered, and that we cannot hope to answer it without
knowing exactly what the thesis of determinism is. For the real
question is not a question about what we actually
do, or why we do it. It is not even a question about what we would in
fact
do if a certain theoretical conviction gained general acceptance. It is
a
question about what it would be rational to do if determinism were
true,
a question about the rational justification of ordinary inter-personal
attitudes
in general. To this I shall reply, first, that such a question could
seem
real only to one who had utterly failed to grasp the purport of the
preceding
answer, the fact of our natural human commitment to ordinary
inter-personal
attitudes. This commitment is part of the general framework of human
life,
not something that can come up for review as particular cases can come
up
for review within this general framework. And I shall reply, second,
that
if we could imagine what we cannot have, viz, a choice in this matter,
then
we could choose rationally only in the light of an assessment of the
gains
and losses to human life, its enrichment or impoverishment; and the
truth
or falsity of a general thesis of determinism would not bear on the
rationality
of this choice.4

V

The point of this discussion of the
reactive attitudes in their
relation — or lack of it — to the thesis of determinism was to bring
us, if possible, nearer to a position of compromise in a more usual
area
of debate. We are not now to discuss reactive attitudes which are
essentially
those of offended parties or beneficiaries. We are to discuss reactive
attitudes
which are essentially not those, or only incidentally are those, of
offended
parties or beneficiaries, but are nevertheless, I shall claim, kindred
attitudes to those I have discussed. I put resentment in the centre of
the previous discussion. I shall put moral indignation — or, more weakly,
moral disapprobation — in the centre of this one.

The reactive attitudes I have so far discussed
are essentially reactions to the quality of others’ wills towards us,
as manifested in their
behaviour: to their good or ill will or indifference or lack of
concern.
Thus resentment, or what I have called resentment, is a reaction to
injury
or indifference. The reactive attitudes I have now to discuss might be
described
as the sympathetic or vicarious or impersonal or disinterested or
generalized analogues of the reactive attitudes I have already
discussed. They, are reactions
to the qualities of others’ wills, not towards ourselves, but towards
others. Because of this impersonal or vicarious character, we give them
different
names. Thus one who experiences the vicarious analogue of resentment is
said
to be indignant or disapproving, or morally indignant or disapproving.
What
we have here is, as it were, resentment on behalf of another, where
one’s
own interest and dignity are not involved; and it is this impersonal or
vicarious
character of the attitude, added to its others, which entitle it to the
qualification
‘moral’. Both my description of, and my name for, these attitudes
are, in one important respect, a little misleading. It is not that
these
attitudes are essentially vicarious — one can feel indignation on one’s
own account — but that they are essentially capable of being vicarious.
But I shall retain the name for the sake of its suggestiveness; and I
hope
that what is misleading about it will be corrected in what
follows.

The personal reactive attitudes rest on, and
reflect, an expectation of, and demand for, the manifestation of a
certain degree of goodwill or regard
on the part of other human beings towards ourselves; or at least on the
expectation
of, and demand for, an absence of the manifestation of active ill will
or
indifferent disregard. (What will, in particular cases, count as
manifestations
of good or ill will or disregard will vary in accordance with the
particular
relationship in which we stand to another human being.) The generalized
or
vicarious analogues of the personal reactive attitudes rest on, and
reflect,
exactly the same expectation or demand in a generalized form; they rest
on,
or reflect, that is, the demand for the manifestation of a reasonable
degree
of goodwill or regard, on the part of others, not simply towards
oneself,
but towards all those on whose behalf moral indignation may be felt,
i.e.,
as we now think, towards all men. The generalized and non-generalized
forms
of demand, and the vicarious and personal reactive attitudes which rest
upon,
and reflect, them are connected not merely logically. They are
connected
humanly; and not merely with each other. They are connected also with
yet
another set of attitudes which I must mention now in order to complete
the
picture. I have considered from two points of view the demands we make
on
others and our reactions to their possibly injurious actions. These
were
the points of view of one whose interest was directly involved (who
suffers,
say, the injury) and of others whose interest was not directly involved
(who
do not themselves suffer the injury). Thus I have

spoken of personal reactive attitudes in the
first connection and
of their vicarious analogues in the second. But the picture is not
cornplete unless we consider also the correlates of these attitudes on
the part of those
on whom the demands are made, on the part of the agents. Just as there
are
personal. and vicarious reactive attitudes associated with demands on
others
for oneself and demands on others for others, so there are
self-reactive attitudes
associated with demands on oneself for others. And here we have to
mention
such phenomena as feeling bound or obliged (the ‘sense of obligation’);
feeling compunction; feeling guilty or remorseful or at least
responsible; and the more complicated phenomenon of shame.

All these three types of attitude are humanly
connected. One who
manifested the personal reactive attitudes in a high degree but showed
no
inclination at all to their vicarious analogues would appear as an
abnormal
case of moral egocentricity, as a kind of moral solipsist. Let him be
supposed fully to acknowledge the claims to regard that others had on
him, to be susceptible
of the whole range of self-reactive attitudes. He would then see
himself
as unique both as one (the one) who had a general claim on human regard
and
as one (the one) on whom human beings in general had such a claim. This
would
be a kind of moral solipsism. But it is barely more than a conceptual
possibility;
if it is that. In general, though within varying limits, we demand. of
others
for others, as well as of ourselves for others, something of the regard
which
we demand of others for ourselves. Can we imagine, besides that of the
moral
solipsist, any other case of one or two of these three types of
attitude
being fully developed, but quite unaccompanied by any trace, however
slight,
of the remaining two or one? If we can, then we imagine something far
below
or far above the level of our common humanity — a moral idiot or a saint.
For all these types of attitude alike have common roots in our human
nature
and our membership of human communities.

Now, as of the personal reactive attitudes, so
of their vicarious
analogues, we must ask in what ways, and by what considerations, they
tend
to be inhibited. Both types of attitude involve, or express, a certain
sort
of demand for inter-personal regard. The fact of injury constitutes a
prima
fade appearance of this demand’s being flouted or unfulfilled. We saw,
in the case of resentment, how one class of considerations may show
this
appearance to be mere appearance, and hence inhibit resentment, without
inhibiting,
or displacing, the sort of demand of which resentment can be an
expression,
without in any way tending to make us suspend our ordinary
interpersonal
attitudes to the agent. Considerations of this class operate in just
the
same way, for just the same reasons, in connection with moral
disapprobation
or indignation; they inhibit indignation without in any way inhibiting
the
sort of demand on the agent of which indignation can be an expression,
the
range of attitudes towards him to which it belongs. But in this
connection
we may express the facts with a new emphasis. We may say, stressing the
moral,
the generalized aspect of the demand: considerations of this group have
no
tendency to make us see the agent as other than a morally responsible
agent;
they simply make us see the- injury as one for which he was not morally
responsible. The offering and acceptance of such exculpatory pleas as
are here in question in no way detracts in our eyes from the agent’s
status as a term of
moral relationships. On the contrary, since things go wrong and
situations
are complicated, it is an essential part of the life of such
relationships.

But suppose we see the agent in a different
light: as one whose
picture of the world is an insane delusion; or as one whose behaviour,
or
a part of whose behaviour, is unintelligible to us, perhaps even to
him,
in terms of conscious purposes, and intelligible only in terms of
unconscious
purposes; or even, perhaps, as one wholly impervious to the
self-reactive
attitudes I spoke of, wholly lacking, as we say, in moral sense. Seeing
an
agent in such a light as this tends, I said, to inhibit resentment in a
wholly different way. It tends to inhibit resentment because it tends
to inhibit ordinary interpersonal attitudes in general, and the kind of
demand and expectation
which those attitudes involve; and tends to promote instead the purely
objective
view of the agent as one posing problems simply of intellectual
understanding,
management, treatment, and control. Again the parallel holds for those
generalized
or moral attitudes towards the agent which we are now concerned with.
The
same abnormal light which shows the agent to us as one in respect of
whom
the personal attitudes, the personal demand, are to be suspended, shows
him
to us also as one in respect of whom the impersonal.attitudes, the
generalized
demand, are to be suspended. Only, abstracting now from direct personal
interest,
we may express the facts with a new emphasis. We may say: to the extent
to
which the agent is seen in this light, he is not seen as one on whom
demands
and expectations lie in that particular way in which we think of them
as
lying when we speak of moral obligation; he is not, to that extent,
seen
as a morally responsible agent, as a term of moral relationships, as a
member
of the moral community.

I remarked also that the suspension of
ordinary inter-personal attitudes and the cultivation of a purely
objective view is sometimes possible even when we have no such reasons
for it as I have just mentioned. Is this possible also in the case of
the moral reactive attitudes? I think so; and perhaps it is easier. But
the motives for a total suspension of moral reactive attitudes
are fewer, and perhaps weaker: fewer, because only where there is
antecedent
personal involvement can there be the motive of seeking refuge from the
strains
of such involvement; perhaps weaker, because the tension between
objectivity
of view and the moral reactive attitudes is perhaps less than the
tension
between objectivity of view and the personal reactive attitudes, so
that
we can in the case of the moral reactive attitudes more easily secure
the
speculative or political gains of objectivity of view by a kind of
setting
on one side, rather than a total suspension, of those attitudes.

These last remarks are uncertain; but also,
for the present purpose, unimportant. What concerns us now is to
inquire, as previously in connection with the personal reactive
attitudes, what relevance any general thesis of
determinism might have to their vicarious analogues. The answers once
more
are parallel; though I shall take them in a slightly different order.
First,
we must note, as before, that when the suspension of such an attitude
or
such attitudes occurs in a particular case, it is never the consequence
of
the belief that the piece of behaviour in question was determined in a
sense
such that all behaviour might be, and, if determinism is true, all
behaviour
is, determined in that sense. For it is not a consequence of any
general
thesis of determinism which might be true that nobody knows what he’s
doing or that everybody’s behaviour is unintelligible in terms of
conscious
purposes or that everybody lives in a world of delusion or that nobody
has
a moral sense, i.e. is susceptible of self-reactive attitudes, etc. In
fact
no such sense of ‘determined’ as would be required for a general thesis
of determinism is ever relevant to our actual suspensions of moral
reactive attitudes. Second, suppose it granted, as I have already
argued, that we cannot take seriously the thought that theoretical
conviction of such
a general thesis would lead to the total decay of the personal reactive
attitudes.
Can we then take seriously the thought that such a conviction — a
conviction,
after all, that many have held or said they held — would nevertheless
lead to the total decay or repudiation of the vicarious analogues of
these attitudes? I think that the change in our social world which
would leave us
exposed to the personal reactive attitudes but not at all to their
vicarious analogues, the generalization of abnormal egocentricity which
this would entail,
is perhaps even harder for us to envisage as a real possibility than
the
decay of both kinds of attitude together. Though there are some
necessary
and some contingent differences between the ways and cases in which
these
two kinds of attitudes operate or are inhibited in their operation,
yet,
as general human capacities or pronenesses, they stand or lapse
together. Finally, to the further question whether it would not be
rational, given a
general theoretical conviction of the truth of determinism, so to
change our
world that in it all these attitudes were wholly suspended, I must
answer,
as before, that one who presses this question has wholly failed to
grasp
the import of the preceding answer, the nature of the human commitment
that
is here involved: it is useless to ask whether it would not be rational
for
us to do what it is not in our nature to (be able to) do. To this I
must
add, as before, that if there were, say, for a moment open to us the
possibility
of such a god-like choice, the rationality of making or refusing it
would
be determined by quite other considerations than the truth or falsity
of
the general theoretical doctrine in question. The latter would be
simply
irrelevant; and this becomes ironically clear when we remember that for
those
convinced that the truth of determinism nevertheless really would make
the
one choice rational, there has always been the insuperable difficulty
of
explaining in intelligible terms how its falsity would make the
opposite
choice rational.

I am aware that in presenting the argument as
I have done, neglecting the ever-interesting varieties of case, I have
presented nothing more than a schema, using sometimes a crude
opposition of phrase where we have a great
intricacy of phenomena. In particular the simple opposition of
objective attitudes
on the one hand and the various contrasted attitudes which I have
opposed
to them must seem as grossly crude as it is central. Let me pause to
mitigate
this crudity a little, and also to strengthen one of my central
contentions,
by mentioning some things which straddle these contrasted kinds of
attitude.
Thus parents and others concerned with the care and upbringing of young
children
cannot have to their charges either kind of attitude in a pure or
unqualified
form. They are dealing with creatures who are potentially and
increasingly
capable both of holding, and being objects of, the full range of human
and
moral attitudes, but are not yet truly capable of either. The treatment
of
such creatures must therefore represent a kind of compromise,
constantly
shifting in one direction, between objectivity of attitude and
developed
human attitudes. Rehearsals insensibly modulate towards true
performances.
The punishment of a child is both like and unlike the punishment of an
adult.
Suppose we try to relate this progressive emergence of the child as a
responsible
being, as an object of non-objective attitudes, to that sense of
‘determined’
in which, if determinism is a possibly true thesis, all behaviour may
be
determined, and in which, if it is a true thesis, all behaviour is
determined.
What bearing could such a sense of ‘determined’ have upon the
progressive modification of attitudes towards the child? Would it not
be
grotesque to think of the development of the child as a progressive or
patchy
emergence from an area in which its behaviour is in this sense
determined
into an area in which it isn’t? Whatever sense of ‘determined’
is required for stating the thesis of determinism, it can scarcely be
such
as to allow of compromise, border-line-style answers to the question,
‘Is
this bit of behaviour determined or isn’t it?’ But in this matter
of young children, it is essentially a border-line, penumbral area that
we
move in. Again, consider — a very different matter — the strain in
the attitude of a psycho-analyst to his patient. His objectivity of
attitude,
his suspension of ordinary moral reactive attitudes, is profoundly
modified
by the fact that the aim of the enterprise is to make such suspension
unnecessary
or less necessary. Here we may and do naturally speak of restoring the
agent’s
freedom. But here the restoring of freedom means bringing it about that
the
agent’s behaviour shall be intelligible in terms of conscious purposes
rather than in terms only of unconscious purposes. This is the object
of
the enterprise; and it is in so far as this object is attained that the
suspension,
or half-suspension, of ordinary moral attitudes is deemed no longer
necessary
or appropriate. And in this we see once again the irrelevance of that
concept
of ‘being determined’ which must be the central concept of determinism.
For we cannot both agree that this object is attainable and that its
attainment
has this consequence and yet hold (1) that neurotic behaviour is
determined
in a sense in which, it may be, all behaviour is determined, and (2)
that
it is because neurotic behaviour is determined in this sense that
objective
attitudes are deemed appropriate to neurotic behaviour. Not, at least,
without
accusing ourselves of incoherence in our attitude to psycho-analytic
treatment.

VI

And now we can try to fill in the lacuna
which the pessimist
finds in the optimist’s account of the concept of moral responsibility,
and of the bases of moral condemnation and punishment; and to fill it
in
from the facts as we know them. For, as I have already remarked, when
the
pessimist himself seeks to fill it in, he rushes beyond the facts as we
know
them and proclaims that it cannot be filled in at all unless
determinism
is false.

Yet a partial sense of the facts as we know
them is certainly present to the pessimist’s mind. When his opponent,
the optimist, undertakes
to show that the truth of determinism would not shake the foundations
of
the concept of moral responsibility and of the practices of moral
condemnation and punishment, he typically refers, in a more or less
elaborated way, to
the efficacy of these practices in regulating behaviour in socially
desirable
ways. These practices are represented solely as instruments of policy,
as
methods of individual treatment and social control. The pessimist
recoils
from this picture; and in his recoil there is, typically, an element of
emotional
shock. He is apt to say, among much else, that the humanity of the
offender
himself is offended by this picture of his condemnation and
punishment.

The reasons for this recoil — the explanation of
the sense of
an emotional, as well as a conceptual, shock — we have already before
us. The picture painted by the optimists is painted in a style
appropriate
to a situation envisaged as wholly dominated by objectivity of
attitude,The
only operative notions invoked in this picture are such as those of
policy,
treatment, control. But a thoroughgoing objectivity of attitude,
excluding
as it does the moral reactive attitudes, excludes at the same time
essential
elements in the concepts of moral condemnation and moral
responsibility.
This is the reason for the conceptual shock. The deeper emotional shock
is
a reaction, not simply to an inadequate conceptual analysis, but to the
suggestion
of a change in our world. I have remarked that it is possible to
cultivate
an exclusive objectivity of attitude in some cases, and for some
reasons, where the object of the attitude is not set aside from
developed inter-personal and moral attitudes by immaturity or
abnormality. And the suggestion which seems to be contained in the
optimist’s account is that such an attitude should be universally
adopted to all offenders. This is shocking enough in
the pessimist’s eyes. But, sharpened by shock, his eyes see further. It
would be hard to make this division in our natures. If to all
offenders, then to all mankind. Moreover, to whom could this
recommendation be, in any
real sense, addressed? Only to the powerful, the authorities. So
abysses seem
to open.5

But we will confine our attention to the case
of the offenders.
The concepts we are concerned with are those of responsibility and
guilt,
qualified as ‘moral’, on the one hand — together with that
of membership of a moral community; of demand, indignation,
disapprobation
and condemnation, qualified as ‘moral’, on the other hand — together
with that of punishment. Indignation, disapprobation, like resentment,
tend
to inhibit or at least to limit our goodwill towards the object of
these
attitudes, tend to promote an at least partial and temporary withdrawal
of
goodwill; they do so in proportion as they are strong; and their
strength
is in general proportioned to what is felt to be the magnitude of the
injury
and to the degree to which the agent’s will is identified with, or
indifferent to, it. (These, of course, are not contingent connections.)
But
these attitudes of disapprobation and indignation are precisely the
correlates
of the moral demand in the case where the demand is felt to be
disregarded.
The making of the demand is the proneness to such attitudes. The
holding
of them does not, as the holding of objective attitudes does, involve
as
a part of itself viewing their object other than as a member of the
moral
community. The partial withdrawal of goodwill which these attitudes
entail,
the modification they entail of the general demand that another should,
if
possible, be spared suffering, is, rather, the consequence of
continuing
to view him as a member of the moral community; only as one who has
offended
against its demands. So the preparedness to acquiesce in that
infliction
of suffering on the offender which is an essential part of punishment
is
all of a piece with this whole range of attitudes of which I have been
speaking.
It is not only moral reactive attitudes towards the offender which are
in
question here. We must mention also the self-reactive attitudes of
offenders
themselves. Just as the other-reactive attitudes are associated with a
readiness
to acquiesce in the infliction of suffering on an offender, within the
‘institution’ of punishment, so the self-reactive attitudes are
associated with a readiness on the part of the offender to acquiesce in
such infliction without developing the reactions (e.g. of resentment)
which he would normally develop to the infliction of injury upon him;
i.e. with a readiness, as we say, to accept punishment6 as ‘his due’
or as ‘just’.

I am not in the least suggesting that these
readinesses to acquiesce, either on the part of the offender himself or
on the part of others, are always
or commonly accompanied or preceded by indignant boilings or remorseful
pangs;
only that we have here a continuum of attitudes and feelings to which
these
readinesses to acquiesce themselves belong. Nor am I in the least
suggesting
that it belongs to this continuum of attitudes that we should be ready
to
acquiesce in the infliction of injury on offenders in a fashion which
we
saw to be quite indiscriminate or in accordance with procedures which
we
knew to be wholly useless. On the contrary, savage or civilized, we
have
some belief in the utility of practices of condemnation and punishment.
But
the social utility of these practices, on which the optimist lays such
exclusive
stress, is not what is now in question. What is in question is the
pessimist’s
justified sense that to speak in terms of social utility alone is to
leave
out something vital in our conception of these practices. The vital
thing
can be restored by attending to that complicated web of attitudes and
feelings
which form an essential part of the moral life as we know it, and which
are
quite opposed wobjectivity of attitude. Only by attending to this range
of
attitudes can we recover from the facts as we know them a sense of what
we
mean, i.e. of all we mean, when, speaking the language of morals, we
speak
of desert, responsibility, guilt, condemnation, and justice. But we do
recover
it from the facts as we know them. We do not have to go beyond them.
Because
the optimist neglects or misconstrues these attitudes, the pessimist
rightly
claims to find a lacuna in his account. We can fill the lacuna for him.
But
in return we must demand of the pessimist a surrender of his
metaphysics.

Optimist and pessimist misconstrue the facts
in very different styles. But in a profound sense there is something in
common to their misunderstandings. Both seek, in different ways, to
over-intellectualize the facts. Inside the
general structure or web of human attitudes and feelings Of which I
have
been speaking, there is endless room for modification, redirection,
criticism,
and justification. But questions of justification are internal to the
structure
or relate to modifications internal to it. The existence of the general
framework
of attitudes itself is something we are given with the fact of human
society.
As a whole, it neither calls for, nor permits, an external ‘rational’
justification. Pessimist and optimist alike show themselves, in
different
ways, unable to accept this.7 The optimist’s style of
over-intellectualizing
the facts is that of a characteristically incomplete empiricism, a
one-eyed
utilitarianism. He seeks to find an adequate basis for certain social
practices
in calculated consequences, and loses sight (perhaps wishes to lose
sight)
of the human attitudes of which these practices are, in part, the
expression.
The pessimist does not lose sight of these attitudes, but is unable to
accept
the fact that it is just these attitudes themselves which fill the gap
in
the optimist’s account. Because of this, he thinks the gap can be
filled
only if some general metaphysical proposition is repeatedly verified,
verified
in all cases where it is appropriate to attribute moral responsibility.
This
proposition he finds it as difficult to state coherently and with
intelligible
relevance as its determinist contradictory. Even when a formula has
been
found (‘contra-causal freedom’ or something of the kind) there
still seems to remain a gap between its applicability in particular
cases
and its supposed moral consequences. Sometimes he plugs this gap with
an
intuition of fittingness — a pitiful intellectualist trinket for a
philosopher
to wear as a charm against the recognition of his own humanity.

Even the moral sceptic is not immune from his
own form of the wish
to over-intellectualize such notions as those of moral responsibility,
guilt, and blame. He sees that the optimist’s account is inadequate and
the
pessimist’s libertarian alternative inane; and finds no resource except
to declare that the notions in question are inherently confused, that
‘blame
is metaphysical’. But the metaphysics was in the eye of the
metaphysician.
It is a pity that talk of the moral sentiments has fallen out of
favour.
The phrase would be quite a good name for that network of human
attitudes
in acknowledging the character and place of which we find, I suggest,
the
only possibility of reconciling these disputants to each other and the
facts.

There are, at present, factors which add, in a
slightly paradoxical way, to the difficulty of making this
acknowledgement. These human attitudes themselves, in their development
and in the variety of their manifestations, have to an increasing
extent become objects of study in the social and psychological
sciences; and this growth of human self-consciousness, which we might
expect
to reduce the difficulty of acceptance, in fact increases it in several
ways.
One factor of comparatively minor importance is an increased historical
and
anthropological awareness of the great variety of forms which these
human
attitudes may take at different times and in different cultures. This
makes
one rightly chary of claiming as essential features of the concept of
morality
in general, forms of these attitudes which may have a local and
temporary
prominence. No doubt to some extent my own descriptions of human
attitudes
have reflected local and temporary features of our. own culture. But an
awareness
of variety of forms should not prevent us from acknowledging also that
in
the absence of any forms of these attitudes it is doubtful whether we
should
have anything that we could find intelligible as a system of human
relationships,
as human society. A quite different (actor of greater importance is
that
psychological studies have made us rightly mistrustful of many
particular
manifestations of the attitudes I have spoken of. They are a prime
realm
of self-deception, of the ambiguous and the shady, of
guilt-transference,
unconscious sadism and the rest. But it is an exaggerated horror,
itself
suspect, which would make us unable to acknowledge the facts because of
the
seamy side of the facts. Finally, perhaps the most important factor of
all
is the prestige of these theoretical studies themselves. That prestige
is
great, and is apt to make us forget that in philosophy, though it also
is
a theoretical study, we have to take account of the facts in all their
bearings;
we are not to suppose that we are required, or permitted, as
philosophers,
to regard ourselves, as human beings, as detached from the attitudes
which, as scientists, we study with detachment. This is in no way to
deny the possibility
and desirability of redirection and modification of our human attitudes
in
the light of these studies. But we may reasonably think it unlikely
that
our progressively greater understanding of certain aspects of ourselves
will
lead to the total disappearance of those aspects. Perhaps it is not
inconceivable
that it should; and perhaps, then, the dreams of some philosophers will
be
realized.

If we sufficiently, that is radically, modify
the view of the optimist, his view is the right one. It is far from
wrong to emphasize the efficacy of all those practices which express or
manifest our moral attitudes, in regulating
behaviour in ways considered desirable; or to add that when certain of
our
beliefs about the efficacy of some of these practices turn out to be
false,
then we may have good reason for dropping or modifying those practices.
What
is wrong is to forget that these practices, and their reception, the
reactions
to them, really are expressions of our moral attitudes and not merely
devices
we calculatingly employ for regulative purposes. Our practices do not
merely
exploit our natures, they express them. Indeed the very understanding
of
the kind of efficacy these expressions of our attitudes have turns on our
remembering
this. When we do remember this, and modify the optimist’s position
accordingly, we simultaneously correct its conceptual deficiencies and
ward
off the dangers it seems to entail, without recourse to the obscure and
panicky
metaphysics of libertarianism.

(2) As Nowell-Smith pointed out in a later
article, 'Determinists
and Libertarians', Mind, 1954.

(3) Perhaps not in every case just what we
demand they should be,
but in any case not just what we demand they should not be. For my
present purpose these
differences do not matter.

(4) The question, then, of the connection
between rationality and
the adoption of the objective attitude to others is misposed when it is
made to seem dependent on the issue of determinism. But there is
another question which should be raised, if only to distinguish it from
the misposed question. Quite apart from the issue of determinism, might
it not be said that we should
be nearer to being purely rational creatures in proportion as our
relation
to others was in fact dominated by the objective attitude? I think this
might
be said; only it would have to be added, once more, that if such a
choice
were possible, it would not necessarily be rational to choose to be
more
purely rational than we are.

(5) Peered into by Mr. J. D. Mabbott, in his
article ‘Freewill
and Punishment’, published in Contemporary British Philosophy, 3rd ser.,
1956.

(6). Of course not any punishment for anything
deemed an offence.

(7) Compare the question of the justification
of induction. The
human commitment to inductive belief-formation is original, natural,
non-rational (not irrational), in no way something we choose or could
give up. Yet rational criticism and reflection can refine standards and
their application, supply 'rules for judging of cause and effect'. Ever
since the facts
were made clear by Hume, people have been resisting acceptance of
them.